Adam, Harold Wilson once said of Tony Benn, 'Tony immatures with age'. If
I were Tony, I'd have taken it as a compliment!

Calum

Max
>
> I'm not sure why the private sector offers the solution, although I don't
> doubt that it is possible to have private sector facilities. South London
> might have been a basket case, but there are many examples of public
> sector excellence. The key it seems to me, is to have excellent, command
> and control management.
>
> There is also little evidence that the private sector, in any sector, is
> more innovative than the public sector. Quite the reverse, actually. And
> given recent practices in banking and pharmaceuticals, there should
> probably be a serious discussion vis-a-vis (re)nationalisation, although
> there probably never will be. All the chickens - re banking, housing etc
> etc - are coming, or will, come home to roost. But most of the people who
> decide on agendas are not the people most negatively affected by them.
>
> Most people seem to get more conservative as they get older, but I seem to
> be going the other way. Either I'm stupid, or most other people are.
>
> Salute
> Adam
> -----Original Message-----
> From:         Max Hotopf <[log in to unmask]>
> Sender:       Anglo-American Health Policy Network <[log in to unmask]>
> Date:         Thu, 5 Jul 2012 16:33:46
> To: <[log in to unmask]>
> Reply-To:     Max Hotopf <[log in to unmask]>
> Subject: What is likely to happen at South East London
>
> I thought the list would be interested in our latest article in
> Healthcare
> Europa on South London...
>
> South London NHS Healthcare Trust - The game changer
>
>  Expect fast progress and private sector involvement in the restructuring
> of the failed South London NHS Healthcare Trust. The administrator is
> about
> to be appointed and a short list of consultancies to advise and plan has
> been drawn up. The government wants the changes to be made in April 2013.
>
> Four consultancies - McKinsey, PWC, KMPG and Ernst and Young (who are
> already advising) are on the administrator&#65533; short list. Our
sources say
> that there will be no option but to involve the private sector in the
> solution and that the solution will have to involve closing or completely
> altering the function of one of the three hospital sites.
>
> One scenario could see the hot acute site sloughed off to King&#65533;
Health,
> the big central London NHS Foundation Trust with the conversion of one
> site
> into an elective factory run by the private sector and a third taken over
> by a mental health trust. We are likely to see the formation of a private
> consortium bringing together a primary operator such as Virgin, a
> hospital
> operator such as Ramsay and a property group like Langs.  There is a need
> to push a lot more services into primary care and away from the
> hospitals.
>
> The big question is "how radical is the government prepared to be?" In
> the
> past, attempts to functionally outsource to the private sector have been
> hamstrung by union insistence that the private operators should not have
> the right to hire and fire staff. They have also been hamstrung by time
> frames of 5-10 years which means that it is impossible for operators to
> make the necessary structural changes. These can deliver very impressive
> savings. PFI projects which deliver new hospitals typically cost 10% of
> the
> revenue of the trust for the next thirty years.  Providing management
> changes are made to take advantage of the new structure, it typically
> pays
> off in improved productivity.
>
> British governments are typically unwilling to be associated with actual
> hospital closures. Yet the consensus is that at least one of the three
> sites in South London has to be closed or converted if savings are to be
> made.
>
> So everything hinges on how brave the government is willing to be. We
> think
> it is doubtful that we will see the most effective private sector
> solution
> which would be to give the entire operation to a company like Helios,
> Asklepios or Ramsay, which is adept at hospital privatisation, on a 20 or
> 30 year contract, allowing it to close and sell off one hospital and
> completely reorganise services
>
> But some sources are optimistic that there will be real change.
> &#65533;dministration is going to happen and it is going to be a
completely new
> set of rules. The powers that be are prepared to think the
unthinkable.&#65533;>
> Our Analysis: Another test for the British government on the pace of NHS
> reform. The government wants a solution in place by April 2013. There
> will
> be an election before the summer of 2015 (probably late 2014 or 2015) and
> the tight deadline indicates that the government is prepared to deploy
> radical solutions and to get them out of the way before the election
> starts. A later deadline would make any radical solution most unlikely.
>
>